Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward, Neil J. Wilkof, and Merpel. Nicola Searle is currently on sabbatical. Read, post comments and participate! E-mail the Kats here

The team is joined by GuestKats Mirko Brüß, Rosie Burbidge, Nedim Malovic, Frantzeska Papadopolou, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy

Monday, 26 January 2015

With just six days to go, the IPKat's sidebar poll on IP and the International Women's Leadership Forum has attracted a wide array of opinions and little apparent consensus. Do please feel welcome to participate in this poll (which email subscribers will find on top of the left-hand sidebar on the IPKat's home page), which may have repercussions not just for women but for ethnic, religious and other special interest groups.

Around the weblogs 1. "Nespresso sues Espresso Club for using Clooney look-alike in advertisement" is the title of a blogpost from the IP Factor. The litigation, brought in Israel, has so far got no further than a failed attempt to secure a preliminary injunction: in the absence of either specific copyright or trade mark infringement, and with the legend "The actor is not George Clooney" cunningly placed in the top left hand corner of viewers' TV screens, the defendant looks as though it may have successfully stirred more than coffee. Over in The Netherlands, Sander Vermeulen's IP & ICT blog, in "Someone's child on your mug", relates the tale of designer Yuri Veerman and reporter Dimitri Tokmetzis, whose Koppie Koppie website features mugs with random pictures of children from Flickr are for sale. This, he explains, is a joke with a serious message: Koppie Koppie was created to warn people that they should be more careful with the things they put on the internet.

Around the weblogs 2. SOLO IP carries the fourth episode in the mini-series of posts on trade mark attorney Sally Cooper's office move, this time dealing with her mail and communications issues. The 1709 Blog hosts a short guest piece from Thomas Dubuisson on The Pirate Bay's curious habit of returning to haunt IP owners, while Ben Challis notches up a fresh CopyKat post. Afro Leo posts on the Afro-IP blog on IP and legacy issues in South Africa. Over on Class 46, former Kat Mark Schweizer tells us how domain name renewal snatching can constitute unfair competition, while another of our old colleagues, Laetitia Lagarde, regales readers with a feline fracas when Spanish word mark CLEAN CAT was able to ward off the threat of a Community trade mark application for a figurative mark containing the words CAT & CLEAN.

Patent Cooperation Treaty: new guide for applicants. The IPKat's very good friend Rosina from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has just reminded him that many readers of this weblog have expressed an interest in knowing when the special edition of the PCT Applicant’s Guide, prepared for students sitting the European Qualifying Examinations (EQE exams), is available. We are all now excited to hear from Rosina that WIPO has just published the latest version in English and French. It contains the entire contents of theGuideas of 31 December 2014 and it may be downloaded in English here and in French ici.

Uniforms for EPO examiners?

Want to be a Patent Examiner at the European Patent Office? Of the fifty-plus comments which readers have added to Merpel's oh-so-innocent post last week, ""New career system" for EPO Examiners: take on extra work", here, at least one is too good to leave in the relative obscurity of the Comments column. Plainly inspired by Monty Python's Lumberjack Song (YouTube here, lyricshere), the anonymous author must also have enjoyed reading blogger Eleonora's Katposts on the Deckmynruling and the defence of parody to an action for copyright infringement in the European Union, with which the following seems to comply:

I’m Examiner and I’m okayI work all night and I work all day(He’s Examiner and he’s okayHe works all night and he works all day!)
By day my thing’s examiningIdees for noveltyBy night I earn my bonusWith new activities!
(By day his thing’s examiningIdeas for noveltyBy night he earns his bonusWith new activities!He’s Examiner and he’s okayHe works all night and he works all day!)
I will not shirk some packaged workIf it earns extra bunceAnd those who just ignore this Are clearly simply dunce!
(He will not shirk some packaged workIf it earns extra bunceAnd those who just ignore this Are clearly simply dunce!He’s Examiner and he’s okayHe works all night and he works all day!)
I earn big fees, by doing theseNew things outside my coreIt pleases Billy MinnoyeAnd leaves me wanting more!
(He earns big fees, by doing theseNew things outside his coreIt pleases Billy MinnoyeAnd leaves him wanting more!He’s Examiner and he’s okayHe works all night and he works all day!)
When do I sleep? Well, that can keepTo earn I’ll buckle downAnd at the end I’ll give meThe best fun’ral in town!
(When does he sleep? Well, that can keepTo earn he’ll buckle downAnd at the end he’ll give himThe best fun’ral in town!He’s Examiner and he’s okayHe works all night and he works all day!He’s Examiner and he’s okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyHeworksallnightandheworksallday!)

News from elsewhere. A katpat goes to Chris Torrero for giving us a link to the Washington Post's piece, "There are now two U.S. trademark applications for ‘Je Suis Charlie,’ because of course there are". This item draws on Robert Ledesma's own hands-on empirical testing of the USPTO's responses to applications to register rallying cries as US trade marks. There's also some tremendously welcome news from Italy, via the newsletter of Modiano & Partners, that continuing legal education is being introduced for Italian patent and trade mark attorneys.

Nottingham Law School, England, has a suite of postgraduate programmes that may appeal to readers of this weblog. You can explore the links below for details of the following:

There's also a Certificate in IP Basic Litigation Skills. This course runs subject to it attracting a minimum cohort of 20, so if you want to do it you might want to bring a friend. The remaining teaching date for the new Basic Litigation Skills for Patent Attorneys 2014/15 is 2 to 6 June 2015, and the remaining teaching date for the new Basic Litigation Skills for Intensive ITMA students 2014/15 is 3 to 6 June 2015. Further information about these Certificates can be found below by clicking the relevant links:

Call for submissions. The Indian Journal of Intellectual Property Law is calling for submissions for its 2015 issue. Details can be found in its guidelines for contributors here. Submissions should be mailed to ijipl.submissions@gmail.com and a copy marked to submissions@ijipl.com. Queries may be directed to the same IDs, but please write “Query” in the subject line. The Editors may also be contactedhere.Please do not direct your queries or send your submissions to the IPKat or Merpel ...

IPKat Policies

This page summarises the IPKat policies on guest submissions and comments. If you have posted a comment to one of our blogposts and it hasn't appeared, it may be because it doesn't match our criteria for moderation. To learn more about our guest submissions, comments and complaints policy and the procedure for lodging a complaint click here.

Has the Kat got your tongue?

Just click the magic box below and get this page translated into a bewildering selection of languages!